Interview with Richard Nordquist, professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at
Armstrong Atlantic State University, USA
In Italy we often use the adjective “rhetorical” referring to a bombastic or inflated
speech. Is it the same in the US?
Yes. Like the word "oratory," "rhetoric" often carries negative connotations, roughly equivalent
to bombast or deception. During the 2008 U.S. presidential race, for instance, Hillary Clinton
said this: "In the end, the true test is not the speeches a president delivers; it's whether the
president delivers on the speeches." Referring indirectly to Barack Obama (whose rhetorical
skills are generally considered superior to Clinton's), Clinton made this observation in a speech
of her own. And the observation she made is in the form of an ancient rhetorical device called
a chiasmus or antimetabole. In other words, she was using rhetoric to challenge or undermine
the rhetoric of an opponent. That's a good example, I think, of how the word "rhetoric" itself is
often similarly used in a negative way to criticize artful speech when it's employed by someone
we disagree with. This is nothing new, of course. In the Gorgias, Plato has Socrates denounce
rhetoric as cookery and trickery. Yet if we interpret "rhetoric" in the broadest sense as
"effective communication," Plato himself was a master rhetorician.
“Public speaking” and “story telling”. Are these modern expressions to say
“rhetoric”?
Rhetoric takes many forms and thus has numerous synonyms. "Public speaking" is a more
contemporary term for "oratory," and rhetoric has often been equated with speech-making
(though written texts are also rhetorical). Advertising is certainly a form of rhetoric (if we
accept Aristotle's definition, "the art of persuasion"), as is marketing. I wouldn't say that storytelling is inherently or necessarily rhetorical, but narratives commonly serve rhetorical (or
persuasive) ends.
Who is your favorite contemporary rhetor? A man and a woman
In the English-speaking world, I believe the last great rhetor (or orator) was Winston Churchill-and he was popularly regarded as an old-fashioned speech-maker even in his own time. Since
the 1940s, rhetoric has moved from the podium to the television and then the computer. The
transition to new media was represented in the U.S. by Franklin Roosevelt, whose "fireside
chats" over the radio were far more conversational than his formal speeches. Of course there
have been notable public speakers since then (such as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
Jr., and Texas congresswoman Barbara Jordan), but the field of rhetoric has been radically
altered by new media, and formal speech-making is no longer a dominant form of
communication. In some ways, the study of rhetoric has been subsumed by the field of mass
communication. In short, I don't have a favorite contemporary rhetor, man or woman.
What is your favorite rhetorical figure? Why?
I'm going to try to answer this in two ways: (a) interpreting "figure" as a person, and then (b)
interpreting it (as you probably intended) as a figure of speech.
(a) This is a difficult question, particularly since we don't have recordings of speakers before
the 20th century. For instance, when read on the page, several of Abraham Lincoln's speeches
are remarkably powerful. Yet contemporaries report that Lincoln had a rather high, thin voice,
and 19th-century audiences were generally unimpressed by his delivery. If we include artful
manipulators of the written word, I would include journalist H.L. Mencken among my favorites.
In addition to his own delightfully hyperbolic prose style, he had a superb talent for analyzing
the styles of others. In my university classes, I rely heavily on speeches from Shakespeare's
plays to illustrate the power of rhetoric. So it may be a bit of a cheat, but I'd have to say that
my favorite rhetorical figure is William Shakespeare.
(b) Though I take pleasure in many figures of speech (antithesis, chiasmus, paradox, zeugma,
and so on), I have to agree with Aristotle that the greatest figure (of speech and of thought) is
metaphor. It's the most pervasive figure (in everyday speech as well as in literature and
oratory), and it continues to intrigue researchers in fields beyond language studies.
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